Plant Trees Like An Arborist- Avoid This Common BIG MISTAKE!

hey I'm Nathan with blue Oak today we're planting cherry trees and I wanted to take this opportunity to show you how these have come in the container and um and and a serious error that they all have and we've had to fix today so we're gonna start by just kind of cutting this open this is an educational video for those of you who want to plant your own trees it also kind of showcases one of the services that we offer but anyway you can see that this tree is totally you don't see any buttress roots coming out of it right so remember this spot right here I can't even get through this with my hands can't even get through this with my hands once I start to air Spade it you'll see how buried this root collar has been and all the encircling roots that are forming around it because it's been grown in the container so if we were to bury it like this plant it like this that would be horrible as the tree got older it would get choked out by its own Roots so and and that's why a lot of these trees do die very quickly um before I enter speed it I'm gonna carefully move the root ball I'm not yanking it by its Trunk by its stem all right get that out of there now what you can do what you should do is try to pull these out by hand if they don't come out by hand and you can actually cut slits in them with a knife but you want to do it radially like that okay I'll show you more of that in a second we're gonna air Spade this a bit [Music] [Music] for this part of the video there were gunshots by The Neighbors in the background and it was really distracting so I just have this voice over but you can see the roots of this tree once we've air spaded the root ball the roots are just like a giant bird's nest and we're watering them to keep them moist but what I was explaining was that the roots were encircling the tree and if we or to Simply stick that root ball into the ground the way it came in that container those roots would grow and as they grew they would encircle the the trunk and choke it out and kill it because we were able to correct this issue while the trees were young we are we're giving them the best chance of thriving in the sight that they're being planted in all right just I'm just pruning some of the ones that are like gonna get dried out now your Spade is great because it can kind of pull this soil out Without Really tearing up the roots bad like I said you got to use a knife and kind of cut them a little bit to pull them out we want to we want them to grow out in a way from the root flare I actually really really really like this tree way that it's going I like it Jack is mixing up our soil mixture we're going to rake back some of the natural guard into here because this soil is really really really bad clay really compacted easily all right so this gravel is just gonna it claims that it's gonna reduce the soil compassion over time and or prevent prevent more bad soil compaction it also should help with uh just creating those um pockets of air when the soil particles are moisture and air and that sort of stuff that uh drainage those sorts of things but it's not it's definitely not a necessary addition to every planting site all right cool so he's mixing the rest of that into there I'm going to go ahead and let's do it I'm going to go ahead and rake some of this natural soil back in I think it's not the compressor actually now we don't want to put too much of this in here because we still have to add our nutrient enriched soil we're not putting too much this in here something that's really important is to not bury these Trees Too Deep that is the probably the number one common mistake is trees being planted too notice that our planting hole is double the size of the root ball if not triple it should be triple that's what it should be but the client did not have enough dirt on hand and didn't want to pay for any extra dirt to make the holes bigger and on top of that this soil is so compacted that we're not complaining that we don't have to dig out as you know the bigger holes but ideally three times the width but not the death you do not want to go too deep you want this root flare to be above ground okay and all these roots that are going to stick up that aren't gonna get under the soil if I can't get them to get to go down then I'm going to have to prune them okay we like to keep these trees really moist in like from start to finish of this planting this planting process because they are going through some serious shock to have all their Roots exposed to have all their Roots pulled out these trees were in containers they were in the shades now they're in the open sun so it's quite a shock gotta keep them watered the whole process and then after they've been established and once you've gotten them in the ground you still gotta water them at least three times a week for the for the growing season in the summer once they start to get established you can you don't have to water them as much all right last step is mulch now mulch is really good and the trees there's a ton of benefits to mulch they are an insulator against the stream temperatures they are a moisture retainer in an extremely dry weather they are a physical barrier against soil compaction and lawn mowers on the roots and those sorts of things um and they are a an organic layer enhancer so they are very good for trees but you don't want to mulch too too thick and not too far up the stem okay do not notice how we left the mulch ring off the root flare and we're not compacting this soil by stomping around it to try to keep the to try to keep the tree in place we're going to use steaks and little guy wires for that for the first season newly transplanted trees should should be supported after that the support should probably be taken off so that they're so they don't become dependent on those supports but at the beginning you know we're not we're not compacting the soil because that wouldn't be good for the root development so we do need to stake them and that's it

Channel: Blue Oak ATS LLC

Views: 807,637

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Id: eKuec3zkM3Y

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 26 2023